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The pressure to produce has been widely felt by countless artists during this stifling pandemic, it’s a real thing. Yet in Stephen Notley’s case, he’d done the hardest part before the COVID panic even showed. Namely, he’d already written a half-hour TV pilot.

Edmonton-born Notley, who lives in Seattle, is the high-functioning mind behind the Bob the Angry Flower comic, and a writer on PopCap’s internationally successful Plants Vs. Zombies franchise since day one. He’s also been flirting with the idea of being a TV screenwriter for decades — even penning an on spec Star Trek The Next Generation scripts back in the ’90s.

But for his 49th birthday last fall, the cartoonist wrote and handed himself a new script: a half-hour, swords-and-sorcery, live-action comedy called The Bastard Prince — the apple not falling too far from the character sheet.

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“I had this character I’d created for Dungeons & Dragons,” he explains from Washington state, “and was sort of amused by his contradictions.

“He’s sort of a barbarian noble as a class and a background. I’d made a little family tree, and thought, ‘OK, that’ll be what this pilot is about.’

“I thought, ‘I just need to have something done with a beginning, a middle and an end.’ Even if it’s terrible, that’s my goal.

“And once you get into something, it sort of takes on a life of its own.”

While he’d written the pilot last fall, the pandemic’s silver lining seriously nudged him into further action. “COVID kicked around and I did what I think a lot of people did in March, just sitting around panicking, distracting myself with a lot of television.

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“Simultaneously, I was doing a lot of these Zoom meetings and seeing Theatresports and Die-Nasty were doing these Zoom events. I’d already half-cast in my head it with these improv people I knew back in Edmonton and thought, ‘Everybody’s stuck, why don’t I try doing a table read?’”

On Saturday — in a Zoom meeting spanning from Seattle to Edmonton, encompassing participants from Grande Prairie, AB, to Austria — that’s exactly what went down. And it was a riot to behold.

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Davina Stewart was meanwhile a Guard Captain, and Seattle bartender Julie Thomas played Joolz — a role written with her in mind. Finally, Meer’s fellow Dead Troll Jacob Banigan — all the way from Graz, Austria — was Daron, Gym’s reluctant best friend, sort of the Stumpy to Gym’s Angry Flower protagonist. Grande Prairie’s Pete MacKay narrated with a voice as deep as Paul Robeson’s.

It’s a tightly-crafted yarn, following structural signposts from Community and Rick and Morty brainiac Dan Harmon’s famous Story Circle, a simplification of Joseph Campbell.

Harmon’s circle, in a single sentence, goes: “A character is in a comfort zone, but they want something, so they enter an unfamiliar situation, adapt to it, get what they want, pay a heavy price for it, and return to their familiar situation, having changed.” Almost any Hollywood film has these bones.

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But the personal details in Notley’s story are worth highlighting here. King Walter, well, history buffs might recognize former Alberta Opposition leader Grant Notley’s given first name — and that’s Steve’s dad. And Gym’s ultra-competent sister character who comes to his rescue?

“Well, it’s not Rachel in terms of speech patterns or anything like that,” Notley laughs. “But if this is going to matter to anybody, it’s got to matter to me. What are my anxieties and things in my life that I can express in some way — it’s this fear that nobody takes me seriously, that people just think I’m a big, loud, dumb idiot. And while I don’t expect my life is going to fall apart and I have to have my sister come bail me out, there’s always that knowledge that if it did, she would.”

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Of course, what Notley’s describing is what we’d all hope to be able to provide for our own family — but this angst creates a very interesting dynamic in the script.

And if you’re looking for any other hints of insidious socialism to protect your children from, as the story develops, Gym and Prince Richard are cursed with a spell where if you hurt one, the other feels the pain.

Scandalous! And also hilarious, as during the reading, Azania and Meer actor-punched their own faces (and other parts) to best the other.

In the spirit of community, Notley opened it up to suggestions after the read, and took some to heart. “Editing is really good. Getting rid of stuff you don’t really need,” he laughs, “is awesome.”

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“It was a wonderful Saturday morning for me,” notes Thomas after the reading, who like everyone else here, had only read it. Adds Banigan from Eastern Europe, “Gosh, it feels like I’m hanging out with my friends from Edmonton for once.”

It’s early, but Notley hopes the series might become a live action TV show. He’s already written a second episode. Given his peers here, he even toys with the idea of making it as a Fringe play.

But, notes Azania, “You know, for all the people who have ever tried to make an animated pilot, this was the most clever way to steal a bunch of voice acting from them by telling them they were in a workshop.”

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